


Berserk Max

by spasticbirdie



Category: Berserk, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 19:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8026690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spasticbirdie/pseuds/spasticbirdie
Summary: Quick little crossover of Berserk and Fury Road, because the parallels between their characters were too obvious to ignore.





	Berserk Max

Sand.

The entire world seemed to be just two things: sand and sky. The wasteland stretched away for miles and miles in every direction, gently sloped hills giving it texture. Shade was almost nonexistent, the sun beating down hot and hard on everything.

One shape stood out from the uniform sandy hills. By the side of what was once a busy highway, a car was pulled over, and beside the car, a man lay slumped against the rear bumper. He wore a cobbled-together set of leather armor over his huge frame, and his short, black hair had turned brown with dirt and dust. His face was rough and scarred, the largest scar shutting his right eye. Below the elbow of his left arm, the skin and muscle abruptly changed to the steel of a handmade prosthetic, built from a random assortment of car parts and scrap, the fingers of the hand curled just tight enough to grasp a steering wheel.

The man’s eye was wide open, but it wasn’t looking at anything nearby. His head occasionally twitched side to side, and he muttered to himself, barely-coherent words escaping from his lips. He stared at people who were no longer there, heard screams that had long since faded from the world, and felt phantom tingles in his missing left hand.

Suddenly, his head jerked up and he stared intently at the horizon. The wind began to pick up, clouds of dust rolling across the road. Through the screams of the long-dead whispering in his ears, he heard something else. War whoops, engines roaring, and strangely, a rhythmically strumming guitar.

He wasn’t imagining those sounds.

Scrambling to his feet, he clambered over the back of the car and dropped into the driver’s seat. Many years ago, people might have identified it as a Camaro. From another angle, others would have called it a Ford truck. Now, it was nearly unrecognizable as either; the rear truck bed was filled with weapons of various kinds, and the roof of the car had been reduced to a bare frame. The passenger seat had been torn out as well, making space for the man’s primary weapon.

As he dropped into the seat, he reached beneath the dashboard and flipped a series of switches. Then he pulled a lever next to the seat, a series of actions that was more muscle memory than active movements. The vehicle roared to life and tore off down the road.

For a moment, the side of the road where the car had stopped was quiet, only the dry wind keeping it from total silence. Then, the distant roar of engines began to whine through the air, and then a massive convoy of trucks, cars, motorcycles, and most strangely, one vehicle that looked like a combination of a stage and companion speakers, crested a nearby hill and blasted forward in pursuit of the man.

The first vehicles to catch up were the small, speedy motorcycles. The first rider pulled up alongside the car, reached into a satchel slung across his shoulder, and flung a small, smoking ball at the driver-side door. The man driving caught a split-second glimpse of it before it exploded in a burst of flame.

The biker hooted and pulled closer, meaning to push the man’s corpse aside and take the wheel, but as the smoke cleared his laughter abruptly died. The heavy, metal prosthetic arm had taken the brunt of the explosion, a bit of fire still clinging to the back of his hand. As the driver lowered his arm, he and the biker locked eyes.

With a much less confident yelp, the biker immediately pulled back from the car. The driver’s face was an inhuman mask of rage and darkness. He no longer looked human.

Before the biker could beat a hasty retreat back to the convoy, his dreams of a quick conquest and easy glory forgotten, the driver moved. He reached over to the dashboard behind the wheel and folded back a metal brace, which attached to the wheel and locked it in place. Then, he reached for where the passenger seat once was with both hands and grabbed his weapon of choice, swinging it up into the air.

The biker’s jaw dropped. For a moment, he forgot his retreat, he forgot the man’s demonic expression, and he forgot everything. The driver, now standing up on the seat, wielded a massive sword in both hands. That is, if you could even call it a sword; it was nearly longer than the man was tall, and almost as wide as a car door. The edge didn’t even look sharp, but the sheer size and weight of it clearly meant it wasn’t an issue. It seemed to blot out the sun as it reached the apex of the man’s swing- a monolith of thick, black iron.

The sword swung down in a single motion, shearing both bike and rider in half. The pieces of biker and bike bounced along the ground, sending a warning back to the convoy.

A warning that they seemed to ignore, as their howls grew louder and their engines roared hotter.

 

* * *

 

 

The chase went on across the wastes, a single long trail left in the dust. The trail stretched for miles and miles back, all the way back to where it began; a tightly clustered trio of plateaus, soaring high into the sky. Each one was topped with green; the only interruption from the miles of brown dirt. At the foot of each tower, a human flood milled about, each one staring above, praying.

The largest of the three towers bore a strange insignia; almost a cross between a bird’s beak and a human skull. The people crowding below stared hungrily at the balcony above it, waiting with bated breath and all manner of buckets and containers.

Inside the second tower, down below the ground, was the frantic action of actors preparing for their performance. In the center of the main garage, a massive tanker truck was being swarmed by all manner of mechanics and soldiers. Tires were filled, kicked, and replaced; young, pale-skinned, and shirtless young boys loaded guns and ammo onto the back of a tanker truck, and a hose pumped gallons upon gallons of water into the tanker.

In the cabin, a young boy fussed around the dashboard, cleaning off dials and oiling hinges. His eye caught on the ignition, and the key welded into it. He hesitated for a moment, then reached for the key.

“Unless you want to bring the whole Citadel down on your head, I wouldn’t touch that.”

The boy jumped. A woman climbed through the passenger door and across the seat, the boy moving quickly out of her way. She sat down in the driver’s seat and looked at the pup, her expression severe. She had brown hair that was cut so short it was nearly shaved clean off, and her naturally dark skin was even darker from weeks out in the beating sun. Her face was smeared with oil and grease, and a thick bandage wrapped around the right half of her head. Her clothes were a mix of a top that looked like it was made of thick bandages, rough, patched up jeans, and heavy boots.

“Locus! Quit botherin’ the boss!” An older man- a rarity in the Citadel- came over and picked the pup up, pulling him out of the cabin and carrying him unceremoniously under one arm. “Sorry, Casca. He kept barking about wanting to help get the rig ready. If I’d known he’d get underfoot so much…”

Casca waved a hand dismissively. “It’s fine. Is the rig all set, Zodd?”

He nodded. “It’s an easy run, the Fire Ring and back. We’ll signal up whenever you’re ready.”

“Do it.” Casca slammed the door shut and leaned on the horn, the sharp tone cutting through the din of the garage. As the blaring noise faded away, the action around the rig shifted; the hoses were retracted from the water tanker and fuel tank, chocks were removed from the wheels, and a hand-picked group of warriors clambered onto the back of the tanker.

Flipping a sequence of switches, Casca brought the rig roaring to life. It rumbled forward and stopped on a metal platform with chains attached to each corner. As gears began to turn far above her head, Casca drummed her fingers on the wheel and kept her eyes locked forward. The platform began to rise, and she could hear voices above; cheering, hollering, ordering, praying, pleading.

Above, the voices reached their peak, then abruptly hushed. A single voice rose up, one that Casca instinctively blocked out. Now’s not the time to think about that, she thought.

The platform stopped in the upper garage. Casca gripped the wheel tighter and watched as the door slowly slid up, letting in the blindingly bright sunlight. Pressing on the gas, the rig began to roll forward.

As her eyes adjusted, Casca looked out at the scene spread in front of her. Throngs of desperate people clustered close to the road the rig was rolling down, as if just seeing the War Boys and their leader would bless them somehow. The water had already been turned on and off, the thirsty recipients holding onto their water containers for dear life, as if they would never get more, as if there wasn’t enough water flowing through the pipes beneath the citadel to slake the thirst of every single one of them and then some.

Casca looked to her right, towards the open desert. Far off in the distance, she could see the smoke coming from the Fire Ring. This is probably the last time I’ll ever see it, she thought, not without some satisfaction.

The voice she had been trying so hard to block out continued to ring around the towers. Just a little bit more, she thought. I won’t have to hear him ever again.

“-and our Imperator and her War Boys will return, with fuel from the Fire Ring for-“

She couldn’t stop herself. She turned, and looked towards the balcony high above the crowd.

Even though the balcony was dozens of stories high, she could see him as clearly as if he were sitting in the passenger seat. A slim figure with pure white hair cascading almost to his waist, and a polished suit of armor that reflected the sun like a mirror.

And most of all, his eyes, cutting through the space between them and staring right into hers. Those eyes gave you the feeling there were no secrets you could hide before them, but were also so comforting that you could tell them everything. Casca felt like they were boring right through her, right through the metal of the tanker to the secret compartment nobody knew she had installed, carrying passengers that only she knew were there. She knew that everyone in the crowd must be feeling that same presence.

That was the thing about Griffith, wasn’t it. Presence.

Casca tore her eyes away. The rig was nearly out of the crowd, pointing straight out to the wastes. She pulled on the horn one more time, clearing the last stragglers from the crowd out of her way, and stomped down on the gas. The rig picked up speed and shot out into the wasteland, the Citadel falling away behind it.

Deep in the bowels of the shrinking towers, a man with only one arm sat motionless in a cage suspended from the ceiling, listening to the crowds cheering above.


End file.
